I Am Bismark

2009-08

hard headed woman

I’ve found myself a hard headed woman
One who takes me for myself
And since I found my hard headed woman
I won’t need nobody else, no, no, no

America's next top models

I’ve found myself a hard headed woman, headed woman
One who will make me do my best
And since I found my hard headed woman
I know the rest of my life will be blessed, yes, yes, yes

I’ve found myself a hard headed woman
One who makes me feel so good
And since I found my hard headed woman I know my life will be as it should, yes, yes, yes

mariam in line

I’ve found myself a hard headed woman, headed woman
One who will make me do my best
And since I found my hard headed woman…

[blatantly ripped off from cat stevens.]

no one knows how to sell gimmicks like vacuum cleaner makers do.

apple store here i come. ive got a date with a mac box set tonight. $169 is not a cheap night, but it’s worth it.

so turns out I am TAing for a class that will require no intellectual exertion on my part. should be a nice way to ease into things.

gotta milk these free meals for all they are worth. a little sick of pizza though.

why oh why does SLC have to be so inconvenient to fly to from the midwest??? 11 hour layover in LAX? seriously??

I am now on track to have a computer science masters degree by spring 2011. all for free too. w00t.

health insurance: check. w4: check. textbook for class I am TAing for: check. now waiting to meet with grad advisory council member.

safari’s web inspector is coming in quite handy for learning how to write html/css.

apparently it’s move in day. madison is kinda crazy packed.

my plate spilled along all of my food on the ground twice. i guess lunch just wasn’t meant to be.

some nice touchy feely TA training all day at the humanities building :/

rediscovered how comfy levis 501s are. why did i ever start wearing anything else?

finally got my TA assignment…. of course after the scheduled TA training for that class was given…. sigh.

me=on;
take(me);
take(~me);
while(!(day||2)){}
begone=true;

#songsincode

really considering deleting my linkedin profile… i just am sick of this social networking creep that has gone on in my life.

whoops

so, today i decided i needed to wash my jeans. since i want my jeans to last a long time and $1.50 seems like a lot of money for a cycle of laundry (i think i am spoiled after free laundry use back in california), i decided to wash them in the kitchen sink. i filled it up with warm water and a cup of woolite dark and threw in three pairs of jeans. things were pretty tight in the sink, but i figured it would be ok. after letting them soak for an hour, it was time to rinse them off. well, having the sink jammed packed didn’t lend to well to the rinsing. silly me thought i could set the jeans on the counter while rinsing out one pair. of course, jeans hold a lot more liquid than i initially thought, so here comes the waterfall of slightly blue water going everywhere. i quick scooped up the jeans and threw them into the bathtub. of course i left a river of water behind me. i finally got them rinsed out after quite a bit more splashing than originally hoped and now they are spread out in the tub draining of the rest of the liquid. i did all of this on a very humid wisconsin evening while it was raining outside. so what does that mean? not only will the jeans probably not dry for at least 24 hours, but i am left with a counter and floor covered in water that refuses to dry, all while in a brand new apartment that doesn’t have anything useful yet such as cleaning rags, etc. thankfully with the one fan on at full blast and the mop, things are in a bit better condition now. maybe next time i will try fewer jeans and on a less rainy evening.

smores with the CS grad students at picnic point.

just ordered a replacement lens for my iphone camera. hope the surgery process goes smoothly..

at a health benefits seminar for grad students. this is way too complicated.

on (to) wisconsin!

ok, yup, i have a blog. i am alive, mostly moved in to my new apartment in madison, and i finished up my second day of graduate school orientation. i’m scared, overwhelmed, nervous, but excited. this is going to be crazy.

things back in california wrapped up pretty uneventfully:

went out on the friday before i left with my coworkers to a sushi restaurant. it was fun, until my coworkers started doing some really silly drunk things, so i felt like i had to stick around for awhile to make sure they were home safe.

sunday was the statewide ysa conference, and i got to sing in the choir. i don’t think anyone knew or cared that it was my last sunday, which was fine: i kept a low profile the whole summer.

my last week at work had some days full of rushing around getting things done and then some days that were completely boring. friday was my last day, and there was also a team quarterly at the waterpark, so it was fun leaving intel while playing lasertag and driving gokarts. packing and cleaning went pretty quickly, and i set out on the road saturday morning.

i debated doing a series of blogs to talk about my freaking long drive to wisconsin, but it was too boring :(. and my iphone camera got too scratched up to take pictures, so no picture blogs until i fix it :(.

nevada was depressingly long as usual, but i got into provo on saturday night to meet up with mariam which was awesome. we went and saw district 9 (my choice), and that was quite enjoyable. sunday morning i went to mariam’s apartment for french toast, then we walked up to campus to find a church meeting to go to (wasn’t too hard). sunday evening we took a walk up around bridalveil falls and enjoyed the beautiful evening. monday morning we got breakfast at gurus, did some hiking up rock canyon. then mariam made her choice of movies so we went to see (500) days of summer (CHICK FLICK), after which we hit up RL with kenji, laura, and michelle. good times as usual. i headed out tuesday morning.

wyoming was bland, but i started hitting storms as soon as i got into nebraska. things got pretty interesting after north platte, and i started hydroplaning and not being able to see about 20 miles west of kearney. thankfully i made it alive and spent the night at a luxurious econolodge. wednesday morning the sky was clear, so i expected to have an easy drive into wisconsin, but of course i caught back up with the storm around des moines. i thought i had made it through, but as soon as i started turning north towards cedar rapids, i knew that the storm was going to catch up. and of course, it continued to get stronger… quite a few tornado warnings in north east iowa, and i would not be surprised if some of them were pretty close. the few other cars of the road kept driving, so i did also, but i started get blown around and the rain started coming down in waves. i had about 10 feet of visibility for awhile. i finally pushed through and the sky started getting clear as i got closer to dubuque. driving into madison was smooth sailing.

well, thats all i will write for now. i want to talk about my new apartment and everything going on here in madison later. but so far, things are going well!

just remembered that there is an apple store here in madison! i wonder if they are doing anything for the launch…

well, i now have my student ID card.. i guess that officially makes me a badger now?

nerd holiday on Friday: even if you aren’t a mac user you should be pumped about snow leopards new stuff like opencl, grand central, etc.

looooong line to get my student ID. do I get to cut to the front if I am a grad student??

9 am orientation. time to start soaking up information.

now signed up for my required 6 credits… advanced operating systems I and advanced computer architecture I. scary and exciting!

just got back from relaxing day and a half in baraboo with the fam. time to get back into starting-grad-school mode.

oops, can’t forget the thick slice of wisconsin muenster cheese.

peppered turkey, horseradish mustard, tomato, green lettuce, cucumber on sprouted wheat bread with vinegar and salt potato chips. yum.

enjoyed the beautiful day walking around the farmer’s market over on the capitol square. so much yummy cheese to sample.

guess i shouldn’t complain about not getting a $6 lunch because I am getting tens of thousands of dollars worth of education.. I was hungry.

nothing besides common sense was taught in that orientation. and I don’t even get free lunch since I have guaranteed funding…

walk to the CS building is around 18 minutes. about the same as my senior year at byu. really need to go grocery shopping so I can eat.

ceiling lights all seem to have stopped working… wall outlets are fine though… hmm?

i really like how close the lake monona bike path is to my house. had a nice run exploring a nearby park and the lake shore.

oh, and cheap hotel toilet paper is really terrible also.

if anything, this trip has taught me at&t sucks in the fly-over states. not surprised i guess since it sucked in california too.

well, my iphone camera lens is scratched… now all the pics look a bit… blurry. try to replace it? get a new point and shoot instead?

survived the storm, got pretty nasty for a bit. safe and sound in a hotel room in kearney.

coming up on an ominous looking storm. looking out for funnel clouds.

gas and dinner in Cheyenne. four hours until Kearney. blah.

spending the whole drive across Wyoming taking support calls from intel.

fill up in rock springs. uneventful drive from Provo, now even more uneventful to Cheyenne.

watched district 9 then stayed up too late talking with Mariam. really tired but i need to shower and go to her place for breakfast soon.

any good YouTube videos? driving through the salt flats….

oh deeth starr valley nevada. you always excite then let down my inner star wars geek.

I think nevadans put up miles of worthless lane blocking cones just for kicks and giggles.

car is loaded, room and bathroom are clean, all I have to do is turn over my keys and then it’s time to start heading east.

america’s obesity problem is no where more apparent than at the waterpark…

exit process is dragging out longer than I wanted.

last day at intel. still not finished packing….

so trying to put a contact lense back in while driving is much more dangerous than texting while driving.

why cant itunes use my address book info to update my billing address? even popular as it is, i’ve always thought the itunes store sucked.

so will they not be showing a subbed version of ponyo in theaters? i refuse to watch the blasphemous english dubs of miyazaki films.

how do you read “lol” in your mind? i read it as “loal” and that usually makes people who write it sound kind of silly.

places i don’t want to be right now: work… and i am sure there is somewhere else.

volcano nachos from taco bell.. probably not the best idea ive ever had. i blame Amy Jo for planting it in my head.

leaving cali on saturday morning… anyone wanna pack for me? i would pay you..

i think i am only going to buy appstore apps that are over $.99. i haven’t bought a single $.99 app that was even worth that.

i know i certainly won’t be using tr.im anymore.

so i need to parse… “something” and then i need to format it… “somehow”.

s = "umm...."; while(1){printf("ERROR: %s",s);}

so, dromiceiomimus is a *nix user.. i always knew she was sexier than the average dinosaur.

the only thing i will miss

from the daily unifarce’s the best of police beat: spring and summer:

July 3: Officers responded to a suspicious person at the Bookstore upset about the deodorant selection. The person picked up a stick of deodorant, kicked it across the floor, then paid for the deodorant and left.

oh the crazy antics of those byu kids.

“burn the land and boil the sea, you cant take the sky from me!”

why doesn’t twitter have a separate field for URLs that doesn’t use up the 140 chars? not like you can read links on dumb phones anyway.

one week of work left.. gosh, i guess i better start packing.. ugh.

first bite of cereal: “hmm..” second bite: “eww..” whiff of the milk carton: “crap, spoiled..” now nothing to eat AND feeling nauseous..

well, goodbye http://tr.im… do i now go back and fix the 20 or so links in my archive? or just let them turn into bit garbage?

at the California YSA conference getting ready to sing in the choir. dunno why i volunteered to sing tenor.

I think my drunk coworkers are all safe at one of their apartments singing along to 90s rock. heading home.

made it to mikuni’s and now stuffing myself with fake, wanna-be sushi.

almost had to pretend to do a “blowjob” shot.. talked them in to me just giving a thumbs up behind them doing it.

got commandeered for a scavenger hunt by a bunch of women.

I am a firm believer in high quality toilet paper.

sending another angry email to byu career placement services. its impossible to filter emails with a new sender/subject line each week.

i’ve always heard screaming and yelling is the best way to win an argument. keep up the good work right wing crazies!

intern event is over.. ended up being kinda lame. too much marketing speak. now just waiting for charlie to take me back to SF.

at the santa clara intel campus today for an intern event.

now back at Amy Jo’s place and a bottle of banana sauce fell and broke. well, it was sauce once…

MS guy just grabbed the zune HD from a dudes hand and said sorry we are saving some secrets for next week.

well, Veronica Belmont is a lot cuter in person.

was up on the twitterwall at gdgtSF bit didn’t get a pic in time. vanity retweet.

standing in line to get into the gdgtSF party. I even got a “my name is” nametag. oh when nerds try to be cool…

heading down to check out the gdgtSF launch party.

tweets too long for 140 characters #2

seriously intel, whose genius idea was it to put shiny tiles on the wall of the bathroom? accidentally looking down while standing at the urinal gives you a crystal clear view of the back half of the toilet. not what i want to see.

working on mission memoirs. its been a four and a half year project, and only a bit over half done. lots of fun reading my experiences!

what i really want on my iphone: one button sync for ALL of my apps. i hate having to sync some apps over wifi, some through itunes, etc..

why can’t i “dislike” things on facebook?

now the saucy jacks are on stage. both bands are really fun.

at the blue lamp with Amy Jo watching charlie’s band, the shangorillas.

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